Posted by fallsfall on March 13, 2005, at 12:55:24
In reply to Re: The Phone Call » Dinah, posted by Skittles on March 13, 2005, at 12:18:36
>It's such a throw-back to being a teenager when my parents were of the attitude, "If you don't do what we say, we don't want anything to do with you." I already feel like I should "yes ma'am" and "no ma'am" her if I see her again.
When current events bring back old feelings I tend to be in the middle of transference (particularly if the feelings are more intense than is reasonable under the circumstances - and I'm not sure that is the case for you right now..??). Transference is NOT a "bad" thing in my book. I have found it to be very useful in learning things about myself and the world around me.
Typically what my therapist does when these situations present themselves is to try to give me as accurate a picture as he can of how he is seeing the interaction. Usually, it is a bit different from what I am seeing. Always we each learn something about the other's point of view. And often I learn that assumptions that I have made aren't really valid. The discussions processing these transference situations are excruciating - it takes all of my courage to keep trying to understand and make him understand. I often want to just give up (except I'm a really stubborn person), but I know that if I keep talking with him that we *will* come to a mutual understanding. There is no way in advance to know what that understanding will be, because we both have to move from our positions a bit to meet in the middle.
Your description of your relationship with her sounds to me like working through this would probably be beneficial. Difficult, but beneficial.
Misunderstandings are worth working through. Plus, she might have contributed her own stuff, since she was going away - maybe she was feeling guilty about leaving, and then when you said you didn't want to come anymore...
Good luck.
poster:fallsfall
thread:469454
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050305/msgs/470453.html